Interesting Postcards from Turkey

Interesting Postcards from TurkeyI like to send out postcards to readers who contribute funds to this blog and website. These sporadic nudges of cash are pretty much what has been keeping my boat afloat these days (as well as being the grease which keeps me sliding away from Chaya’s iron grasp, as she presses me [...]

I like to send out postcards to readers who contribute funds to this blog and website. These sporadic nudges of cash are pretty much what has been keeping my boat afloat these days (as well as being the grease which keeps me sliding away from Chaya’s iron grasp, as she presses me to find a real job hehehe). In point, when I check my Paypal account and find that a reader has made a donation, it feels good.

When this happens, I proudly do a little victory dance for Chaya and tell her that a reader has contributed $20, so therefore I am not a wholly useless human being wasting away as he writes words out to oblivion.

She usually smiles sweetly and says something logical like, “Oh, that’s great honey, but $20 is not going to raise a child.”

I have received a small handful of reader contributions lately, and ventured into a tourist district of Istanbul to find some postcards. It was raining and I looked and looked, but, oddly, could not locate a single tourist shop, book store, or minimart that sold postcards.

I would think that a handful of postcards would be the easiest thing to pick up in a shopping district of a city that receives masses of tourists.

I thought wrong.

Through the rain I searched, with the fallow thought that I did locate a postcard rack a few days ago that was far, far away from where I was. I chided myself for not picking up the postcards the moment I found them, but, at the time, I figured that postcards would not be scarce items to find in Istanbul. Also, at the time that I walked by them it was night, and the vendor had a shop down a dark alley. I did not really think it was wise to go sifting through a street side rack of postcards like some tourist idiot in the middle of a dark, rainy night.

So I put it off, figuring that I would run into some postcards when the time was right. Days upon days slipped by, and oddly no rack of postcards stood in my path. So I set out yesterday to locate the object of my search, no matter what.

I looked and looked in the rain. No postcards were to be found anywhere. This was odd.

I got off the main street in Taksim and began looking through the little alleys that wind their ways through the Beyoglu hills. I just followed my feet, and they led me to water. No, not water, but a large chest that was set up in the street in front of an antique book store.

Inside this chest was a messed up collection of old black and white photos, antiquated newspaper clippings, and, yes, postcards.

But these postcards were not of the ordinary type. No, they were not those sterile postcards that have worn out pictures of tourist sites on their front and “visit Turkey” slogans on their backs. No, these postcards were special.

They seemed to have been made at home by some Turkish fellow a long, long time ago. I am assuming that they were just photos of his family that, for some unknown reason, he decided to print on heavy stock photography paper and stamp some postal lines on the back so that they could be utilize as postcards.

Treasure!

I found exactly what I was looking for without knowing that I was looking for it: unique, sort of oddball postcards to send to the kind of oddball folks who contribute to this sort of oddball website.

It is my impression that these postcards of Turkish family get-togethers are vastly superior to any tourist photoshopped postcard with the “sites” of Istanbul strewn all over it. If I were to receive something in the mail, I know that I would prefer it to be a little weird.

And, so I hope, would the readers who contribute funds to keep this journey ongoing.

Interesting postcards from Turkey.

Treasure! Chest of interesting postcards, old photos, and news clippings from Turkey.

Contribute to Vagabond Journey.comFor a contribution of:

$2 – $20- a postcard from where I am traveling$20-50- postcards from each country I go to for the next 4 months$50-$100- postcards from every country for the next 6 months of travel and a weird (I mean really weird!) gift

For contributions over $100, I will send you postcards and weird gifts for a very long time.

Wade Shepard is the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. He has been traveling the world since 1999, through 88 countries. He is the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China, and contributes to The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. Wade Shepard has written 3426 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

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About Wade Shepard

I’m an itinerant writer who has been traveling the world since 1999, through 88 countries. I wrote Ghost Cities of China, a book which chronicles the two years that I spent in China’s new cities, and have another book about the New Silk Road coming out soon. I’m a regular contributor to Forbes, The Diplomat, and the South China Morning Post, and I have been featured on BBC World, VICE, NPR Morning Edition, CNBC Squawk Box, CBC The Current … This is my personal blog where I share stories from the road that don’t fit in anywhere else. In other words, this is my daily diary, raw and real — it is not edited or even proofread. Subscribe below.